The old adage, it's as easy as
riding a bicycle, was about to be tested. I had joined up with
a group of bicycling enthusiasts for a week-long cycling tour
called a Bicycle Beano. The tour promised good food and drink
and noncompetitive rides through some of England's most unspoiled
countryside.
To join the group one Saturday in June, I travelled by train to
Ledbury in the border country of Herefordshire. From the station,
a taxi took me through Ledbury, an inviting village of black and
white timbered Tudor buildings, and then into the Herefordshire
countryside, where gently rolling hills and traffic-free lanes
are ideal for cycling.
In the Beano common room, Jane Barnes and Rob Green, the founders
and organizers of the beano program, were tacking up directions
on the bulletin board for the next day's ride. We were headed
for the Malvern Hills, noted for their pure spring water and their
inspiration to the poet William Langland, who is believed to have
written 'Piers Plowman' here, as well as to the composer Edward
Elgar. Our route was 35 miles, round trip, with an optional five-mile
short cut or a four-mile extension over the Malvern Hills.
Jane and Rob lead the expeditions but maps are distributed just
in case you really do go at your own pace. With entries like "left
immediately after Peg's Farm by yellow water hydrant on end of
brick wall at farm", the maps provide a kind of colloquial
guidebook to the area's less obvious sights.
In the dining room, my fellow cyclists, who ranged in age from
5 to 70 and came from as far away as Germany and New Zealand,
were helping themselves to a dinner of mushroom bake, various
salads and redcurrant tart. All Beano dishes are vegetarian wholefood,
but there is no purist attitude on a Beano, and at lunchtime pub
stops you could always find meat on the menu. And with tea and
home-baked cakes waiting for us after the day's ride, Bicycle
Beano lived up to its culinary promise.
The resident Canada geese treated us to a honking reveille at
dawn the next morning, and after a leisurely breakfast of wholemeal
toast, grilled mushrooms and tomatoes to fortify us, we set off.
As we pedaled the long flat stretches between the hills a constantly
changing landscape fell away; red and white Hereford cows grazing
in bright green fields; Queen Anne's lace, cowslips and varieties
of wild flowers sprouting from the small banks that hugged the
sides of the roads. Scots pines, their stately trunks and branches
set off by feathery leaves, bordered fields growing hops to be
used in beer brewing; and apple orchards were starting to blossom
with the crop for the autumn cider pressing.
There was no one great architectural or natural sight that had
to be seen but rather a succession of unspoiled and understated
features – orchards, hillsides, farmhouses – that
fit naturally in the Herefordshire countryside.
It was the quietness that was heard most, broken only by the
sound of a cow lowing, or the breeze stirring the trees and the
crunch of gravel under our tires as we climbed up to West Malvern
for lunch at the Brewer's Arms pub.
Each day we rode about 40 miles – though some of us sometimes
took short cuts suggested in our route sheets to reduce the mileage.
Towards the end of the week, I wanted to give into my saddle sores,
but then a 60-mile ride, which was to be our tour de force, was
announced. The enthusiasm of the cyclists who had ridden on this
trip, into the Lower Wye Valley, on a previous tour, prevailed.
And the next morning we set off south for the Forest of Dean,
criss-crossing the River Wye on a small footbridge and a swinging
suspension bridge, whizzing up and down the valley through fields
of patchwork green, pink and yellow, and accompanied throughout
by songbirds and a buzzard circling overhead. In typical English
fashion, it rained, then the sun came out, followed by a glorious
rainbow, and then more rain, but the sheer joy of movement and
fresh air was too exhilarating for anyone to mind.
We revived during an afternoon stop at a Victorian country house
that serves a substantial tea with homemade scones and cakes.
We also made a stop to see the church built in 1901 by William
R. Lethaby, a follower of William Morris, the English designer
and social reformer. Morris was prominent in the late 19th century
in the Arts and Crafts movement that was directed toward the revival
of the decorative arts. The church has tapestries designed by
the pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones.
Then it was back to base and put our feet up.
